Just something to think about (future): [Archive]

CruNcher

27th June 2009, 14:04

It was like a cold shower going down my back reading this, especially in the times we are now.

DivX Ceo Kevin Hell Interview statement:

“We are not really competing with anybody but ourselves right now. It’s about ‘Do I want to have access to content, or not?’ There’s no competition, because there’s no alternative. Either you have access to three billion videos or you don’t. I don’t see any competitors in our current model. But obviously there would be a competitive risk, when we move into a more connected world, when more and more content becomes available.”

On the other side i can only lough about this the iceberg seems closer ahead then i thought ;) (of course our world economy already hit it anyways, so hell is standing now with his cowboy hat on the first deck shooting @ everyone who tries to get onto a rescue boat great idea mr hell).

Ghitulescu

29th June 2009, 12:36

What seems to be the problem?

Shinigami-Sama

29th June 2009, 21:09

What seems to be the problem?

the denial is deeper than the Atlantic trenches?

Ghitulescu

1st July 2009, 19:30

Now, if you are complaining about the quality of life (video, music, services etc.), you should bear in mind that's the consumer that decides, unless it's forced by "unethical" methods.

Take music: the boom of MP3 made the online sellers to sell MP3. Is anyone there that sells WAVs in CD quality? Nope. Why? Because the majority simply does not care about quality or do not sense the difference (hearing, technik, set-up, commodity).

The same cause that irrupted MP3 created also Divx: storage space. The "heavy" players were the last to implement Divx in their players (Pioneer, Sony, Panasonic) while Walmart cheap Chinese clones did that from the 2nd second. What seems to be the format that online sellers prefer? Don't tell me it's a Divx variant?!

It's the audience that requested that the CDs be mastered not within the -18dBfs standard, but close to 0dBfs so it will sound louder (because of shitty players they buy because they are cheap). Some masterings are so loud that will sound distorted also on profi players that have 6 or 12 dB headroom (Nelly Furtado-Loose).

Until the majority will say: STOP this nonsense! the producers will do whatever they want. It's pure marketing. No competition means monopol. Should a demand exist, that would be a goldmine for the sellers. You may end this nonsense by creating a no demand.

iffybob

26th July 2009, 13:05

As with all thing in the tech arena, knowing, people are getting what they think they want, because they dont understand what is available, and if they do they cannot get none "sales pitch info", which just says "this is it, get this, got it, now your cool" till the next thing, new does not equal better. If some one speaks out the the lawyers step, or if your a review mag for example the company will stop speeking to you, and you cannot do your job.

On the other hand there is the tools for the job.

I have an Mp3 player 8GB, solid state memory. I use it when Im out and about, At home I play the CDs.
I encode my Mp3s at 22Khz, 64Kbps, dual mono CBR, and set the encoder to high quality.
I have 50 full abums on there, that take up around 2GB, so far...
I will be able to put all my albums on there ... around 150 cds .. when I get round to it.
the sound quality is "Adiquate" for the job.

A freind of mine sells second hand DVDs, Videos, and CDs - at the moment he is literally dumping VHS Videos, people replaced there VHS tape for DVDs. Now with Blue Ray, he asked for my oppinion on the viability of DVDs, my advice to him was that people dumped VHS for DVD, on the grounds that , there big, the degrade with time, the quality was not that good, and compaired to DVD they are clumsy to use, and that people were not going to "replace" there DVDs with "Blue Ray" the same way they replaced VHS, but they would buy "new" releases on the new format ... why .. because for most people DVDs are good enough for the job ... and there happy with that.

If you just use MP3s on a player, just buy mp3s (cheeper, save your money), better quality is CD, even better 45rpm vinal records.
but (I dont think) we never got a commercial DVD Audio, (like CDs), though the tech is available .... why.

Ghitulescu

26th July 2009, 13:26

Don't dump the DVDs!

The major difference between the DVD and VHS is not simply the quality (yes, that's a big point), but
1. easier handling (direct access to any chapter)
2. relatively better withstanding (a VHS can be so easily deteriorated with serious quality effects).
and (but only after a while)
3. easier copy (1:1 unlike VHS).

It may be also less storage in shelves (2DVDs instead of a VHS), image/audio quality and the cheaper possibility to use it for your own movies.

On the other hand, BD and its lost copendant, brought a higher definition as the only commercial advantage, with several big disadvantages: copy protections that are annoying, a medium that is not so stable as the DVD was, a new chain of devices (expensive and due to HDCP extremely sensitive to factors outside your control) and so on.

And I noticed that a good BD player (or a good scaler) may create a HDTV image par to an original HDTV one, at least for some people, thus the quality of the DVDs that mirror the BD ones is a bit less than it should be, so the regular Joe can spot the differences - otherwise nobody would buy the BD if the DVD would look so good.

To my humble opinion, HDTV was brought to us not to give us a better image but to catch us into a full digital world, that is solely in their hand. You have only one right, that of buying their products, at their prices and their conditions.

smok3

26th July 2009, 13:55

Take music: the boom of MP3 made the online sellers to sell MP3. Is anyone there that sells WAVs in CD quality? Nope. Why? Because the majority simply does not care about quality or do not sense the difference (hearing, technik, set-up, commodity).

i thought we went throught this allready, now please define:
a. what is CD quality
b. why would you think that mp3 is any worse then 'cd quality' for an end user

ok, i see that you read the part on loudness war, thats good start, now head to hydrogenaudio.org for the rest of the knowhow...

Ghitulescu

27th July 2009, 08:52

Quality is subjective. Of course if you record a gramophone through a mic with a stand-alone CD-recorder you'll have CD quality (44100Hz/16b/2chn) but it would still sound like a gramophone. Running the VHS through a scaler would yield a perfectly valid HDTV signal, yet the quality is not HDTV. You cannot however have the true HDTV signal onto a VHS, because of the medium limitations.

When a standard is set, it seems to me that's a matter of common sense to maximise its use.

The quality of MP3 depends on the bitrate and on the used algorithm. Bands/singers like ACDC or Jimmi Hendrix would probably sound the same in CD or MP3 quality, since their music is anyway distorted. Electronic music if synthesized would inevitably sound the same in MP3 (provided the bitrate is high enough) since there are no harmonics to be thrown away during the compression. Real life sounds would need however a higher bitrate, not to sound too artificial.

I can identify (at least 70% probability) an MP3 (128k) from an original CD even in my car stereo.

And yes I know that 320k MP3 would sound probably identical to the WAV source. The same might swear also the owners of MiniDiscs with the latest ATRAC. Or the owners of DCC. But it's not identical. That's the point.

There is however another one. If people insist that there is no difference between a MP3 (say 320k) and a regular WAVE (CD/DAT standard), nothing stays in way of music studios to employ hand-held mic recorders, the ones that record directly im MP3 (some 200€ apiece) and thow away all the expensive (2000€ or more) and quality oriented studio gear.

I do not jump into their defense (they are greedy enough, I mean the producers), but in the end you should not forget that you may have the MP3 in a good quality only and only because they created a quality BWF, DSD or any other studio format before.

I still remember the days when the CDs were a rarity (and CD-writers cost a fortune, like their media did), and the MP3 was invented for space reasons (people cannot be stopped to copy). Colleagues of mine (I worked that time at a software company) swore that MP3 at 128k (which was the highest level back then) sound the same as the original. I have to give them right, using the PC speakers, yes, no difference. They changed however their minds after listening the same on my gear (both output by AWE64). 10 years after that, the lowest limit was set to be 192k, now I think 320k is used. That's the perfect example to underline that MP3 is inferior to CD. Should it be perfect at 128 it wouldn't be necessary to raise the bar to 192 then to 320.

PS: I worked in a studio, also in a radio station, so I know what I'm talking - also from a practical experience, not only reading the theory.

MfA

27th July 2009, 10:50

There is however another one. If people insist that there is no difference between a MP3 (say 320k) and a regular WAVE (CD/DAT standard), nothing stays in way of music studios to employ hand-held mic recorders, the ones that record directly im MP3 (some 200€ apiece) and thow away all the expensive (2000€ or more) and quality oriented studio gear.
It wouldn't save any money, local bandwidth and storage are essentially free for audio. Using cheaper gear is always an option, but compression is not a factor.

Compressed HD cameras are a better example, here local bandwidth and storage are not (yet) free and compression though a compromise makes digital HD cameras both more portable and more accessible.

smok3

27th July 2009, 10:56

I can identify (at least 70% probability) an MP3 (128k) from an original CD even in my car stereo.
and? (that just means somebody can't use mp3 encoder properly, nothing else), also there is something called ABX test which you can use one day
also check this
http://www.listening-tests.info/mp3-128-1/results.htm
(it means that 128kbps mp3 is really close to being transparent)

There is however another one. If people insist that there is no difference between a MP3 (say 320k) and a regular WAVE (CD/DAT standard), nothing stays in way of music studios to employ hand-held mic recorders, the ones that record directly im MP3 (some 200€ apiece) and thow away all the expensive (2000€ or more) and quality oriented studio gear.
i was talking about end-formats, production should stay 'uncompressed' for sure

PS: I worked in a studio, also in a radio station, so I know what I'm talking - also from a practical experience, not only reading the theory.
i know bunch of people from radio stations, i wouldn't brag with that...

10 years after that, the lowest limit was set to be 192k, now I think 320k is used. That's the perfect example to underline that MP3 is inferior to CD.
don't know where you get that, any links? CD quality doesn't mean anything (i can make CDs from 24kbps mp3s if i want)

Ghitulescu

27th July 2009, 17:46

and? (that just means somebody can't use mp3 encoder properly, nothing else), also there is something called ABX test which you can use one day
also check this
http://www.listening-tests.info/mp3-128-1/results.htm
(it means that 128kbps mp3 is really close to being transparent)

i was talking about end-formats, production should stay 'uncompressed' for sure

i know bunch of people from radio stations, i wouldn't brag with that...

don't know where you get that, any links? CD quality doesn't mean anything (i can make CDs from 24kbps mp3s if i want)

Let's not deviate the discussion, I understood your point. Your decision is to rip the CDs to MP3s. Mine is to keep them as intact as possible. 700MB of space is less than .5€ if stored on HDD or even less if stored as a CDR. Luckily the producers rarely fill the CD up to the margin, so I can save the image ;) as such, it's much safer than to rerip the CDR once again.

The danger I feel is that there is a critical mass of people that do not care about the studio quality of the music, since they do not want (or have the money) to invest into a decent HiFi, but they like to hear the music in portable devices. And I'm not talking here about super HiFi that cost in the range of 5000€ or above, but normal ones.

Now, a studio manager, having a certain budget, would think it obvious, that it's nonsense to invest/replace/repair studio gear if the final product would be some MP3 anyway. Highly musically compressed and close to 0dB peak, since the environment is loud these days. So loud that last month a young boy had been overrolled by a train, he couldn't hear the train as the music was very loud, to cover the noisy ambient.

About the comparative tests, you'd be surprised to find that they are not so conclusive as they look, it's like statistics, one can prove everything with the correct tools. And I don't care what other people think or hear, it's me the one that paid the music, I don't care if they like it or not.

Those links are not allowed here, but if you google a bit you'll find that the bitrate specified in the name is now 320 (I think it's the maximum for MP3) while years ago was 192, ever remoter was 128. You have to take my word for this.

That you can do a CD out of lowest bitrate MP3 was never disputed, it's similar to my gramophon example. That was given to explain that CD WAV format allows a better quality than MP3. It's like a fuel tank, you can fill it up with Regular, but you can fill it up also with Premium 98. But a Diesel tank can be filled up only with Diesel.

It wouldn't save any money, local bandwidth and storage are essentially free for audio. Using cheaper gear is always an option, but compression is not a factor.

Compressed HD cameras are a better example, here local bandwidth and storage are not (yet) free and compression though a compromise makes digital HD cameras both more portable and more accessible.
I do not contest that this was a bad argument, an extreme one, of course they did not. Yet. But what if? And I was not talking about the compression to MP3 as itself, but of the fact that portable devices under the 200€ range cannot record WAV but MP3 - guess why?

smok3

27th July 2009, 20:35

Your decision is to rip the CDs to MP3s. Mine is to keep them as intact as possible
nope, i like FLAC, but that has nothing to do with the point i was trying to make.

Now, a studio manager, having a certain budget, would think it obvious, that it's nonsense to invest/replace/repair studio gear if the final product would be some MP3 anyway. Highly musically compressed and close to 0dB peak, since the environment is loud these days.
ok, this about loud enviroment is an interesting statement, so you claim that this is the reason for loudness war?

About the comparative tests, you'd be surprised to find that they are not so conclusive as they look
of course not, my conclusion with trying to do such tests is that my hearing is even worse than i thought (probably that would be just to hard to admit for a radio person thought?)

LocalH

28th July 2009, 02:52

I think it's funny that the DivX guy is harping on about "three billion videos" when by far, the vast majority of those are illegal Internet-distributed rips and therefore could be interpreted by some as an endorsement of infringement if not outright inducement. Also, he seems to forget about codecs like AVC and the venerable MPEG-2 which, together, deliver far more legal content than DivX could ever hope for at this point (and especially in the case of AVC much of the illegal content that will be forthcoming as HD matures).

DivX (or any other MPEG-4 ASP codec) simply doesn't scale as well as AVC, similar to the progression from MPEG-1 to MPEG-2 to ASP. It's the natural progression of things, and as computing power increases, we'll see even more efficient coding schemes than AVC. To a point, at least - but that point, I think, is still some time away. And even once DivX has firmly fallen out of widespread use for new content, there will be a huge glut of then-legacy DivX content.

Guest

28th July 2009, 03:49

You appear to be unaware that DivX has migrated to AVC.

Ghitulescu

28th July 2009, 05:44

... there will be a huge glut of then-legacy DivX content.

Maybe, but this legacy content is in fact just a transcoding of the original DVD and/or DVB material. No big loss, in my view, since the original material is still available.

websiteslate

31st July 2009, 18:05

it's all depend on luck...no one can change future

bob0r

31st July 2009, 18:29

We all know where DivX came from.... they simply used the name from all the no-so-legal "DivX :-)" encodes and grown big only from the name. Divx was never really used, but xvid or divx most users have no clue, 99.9999% of all no-so-legal downloads were xvid.

The same goes for x264 and .mkv.
99.99999% of all 720p no-so-legal encodes are x264.mkv.
And divx again, smartly supporting .mkv, tries to make money of something already widely known.

So ofcourse they are competing against themselfs!
We all know xvid and x264 are superior by miles when it comes to encodes and release volumes.

Ghitulescu

31st July 2009, 19:36

I still fail to see the advantages of xvid/divx over the original DVD, other that space.

I know there are movies that were released on DVD and look like ****. But this is not an intrinsec advantage of xvid/divx/h.264 ....

I am old enough to remember the first days of divx, was a frenzy of recoding of DVDs into this new panaceum universalis, well, back then the internet was expensive, the transfer rates were low, HDD space cost a lot - all in favour of divx and flavours. It seems to me that every new wonder coder stirs the video comunity, and launches a new frenzy each time, lots of people start reencoding their movies into the new format, hoping for ... well, here I have a problem understanding them...

I have a friend that bought a new Mac and the next action was to rip his entire collection into MP3 to have it on the computer. I asked him why. The answer was uncredible: -because I want ot hear them on my Mac. -Well, you could listen them as CDs. -yeah, but it's not the same.

Ghitulescu

31st July 2009, 19:49

ok, this about loud enviroment is an interesting statement, so you claim that this is the reason for loudness war?
I think this was a major point in raising the loudness. People spend more time on their way to/from work than before and they fill the "void" with music. Could it be a car stereo, a portable MP3 player, or simply a ghetto CD player on batteries.

I do not work for "them" so I do not have 1st hand info, but this is one reason I could deduct from. There are others ...

You need volume to cover the ambient noise (engine, traffic, indistinct chatter, all kind of noises that spoil your fun). The fathers of CD never thought of a portable device of that quality, for portable solutions a walkman (tape) was simply enough (say 30dB of dynamic).

A good studio headphone would give you some 0.05% THD, a portable one probably 2% (a good one) - so who cares about music quality if you hear it with 2% distorsions? Me ;) I noticed in Germany more and more people start using big closed headphones, they feel the difference in quality. That's a good start...

Astrophizz

31st July 2009, 22:35

I thought the loudness war was because of modern radio play. They'd jack up the loudness to hook listeners faster than a quiet intro.

Ghitulescu

1st August 2009, 14:54

I thought the loudness war was because of modern radio play. They'd jack up the loudness to hook listeners faster than a quiet intro.

Why would one need more loudness?

Well, there are several reasons:
1. not enough power in the final amplifier stages: usually with the portable things; the "smart" inventors of the '80s discovered the "bass trim", they cut the bass (which consumes a lot of batteries, with no immediate advantage) and let the frequencies of about 1kHz dominate the spectrum. It's not a secret that the human ear has a peak for 1000Hz (female voice, male about 800Hz). The same trick is used today with most of the surround systems. Take out the subwoofer and you'll have canaries in your room.:)
This led the people in the past to raise the volume so they can hear all frequencies of the audible spectrum (the midrange was eventually flattened but the higehr and lower frequencies have been improved). It was a common thing back in the '80s. It was not "angeberish" (again I have not a clou how is that in Englidh), but a physiological need.
2. enough "electrical" power, noisier environment: the trick with the dynamic- unfortunately not all people [correctly] understand this. The dynamic is the spectrum of levels that exists between the quietest and the loudest signal. What defines the quietes and the loudest? The quietest is defined by the intrinsec noise (some -40dB for a good tape, -80 for a good preamp/amp pair, -96 for a normal CD player, some -60dB for a good record player (pickup) and a lot less for a portable device). The loudest is given by the maximal electric power and the efficiency of the headphones or loudspeakers.
3. enough power, quiet environment: now we have really really to understand the things. Human voice is not equal. People speak and they have a lot of dynamics, well, I would say at least 30dB. This was however a problem for the early TV. So they used compression on human voice, to make it easily "predictable" for the final amp (you have to know that the radio/TV engineer has to be very carefull about the electrical level s/he has to send to the "tower" (this way was the VU meter developed), so compression was used to "normalize" the levels. When mixing voice with music, a problem occured: the voice was compressed, the music not. So it sound displeasant to have quiet music mixed with loud voice. Music had to be raised to the same level. That's why you might have up to 5 compression stages of music when listening radio: 1. recording (smart engineer compress only the bass), 2. mixing, 3. CD productiom, 4. radio mix, 5. final compression (to keep the "tower" under control). The "tower" is the RF emiter.

iffybob

3rd August 2009, 23:15

I getting a real dajavu, here, seriously, 23 years back and many times after.

Ive heard this argument over and over, it goes down hill from here,:p

truth is, every choice in an abstract system is arbatory, at some point some body made a descition, because it had to be made,
and for the most part the choice was a considered one ( or the guy was an idiot and nobody said anything:)).

why do avi resolutions like being multiples of 16, not 2,4,8,32, etc, because sombody made the choice. They stuck there neck out, and got away with it.

Sinclair made an elctric go-cart in the 80's, and did not.

Product roll out cannot be stoped on the grounds nobody is going to or can make the manufactures.

Personaly I dont understand why we still use spinning discs, shorly square ones with no hole, and use flatbed scanner type tech. the only reason I can think of is people are more conforted by a disk. and until all solid staite (SD cards , Flashpens ), become the norm , the disc will stay - ( until pay as you view, on demand comes in and the distributors realy start rubbing there hands, mybe a good sorce of ignition for them :rolleyes:)

I'm still remember, 45rpm 12inch singles, through a Quad Amp, and real nice speakers, at a guys house where he use the celler as a base resonator, Frankie Goes to Holywood, sounded great.
Not real portable though.

There is noway, Im going to get Guns and Rose, or Lilly Alen (well I can dream), round my place, certainly will not follow me around town etc, or the cast of Lord of the Rings, its all a compremise always will be prob in my lifetime,

Accept it .......... Live with it ........... Move on

There are other things to do :cool:

(Ps Im so going to get slamed for this :stupid:)

Doobie

7th August 2009, 11:14

“We are not really competing with anybody but ourselves right now. It’s about ‘Do I want to have access to content, or not?’ There’s no competition, because there’s no alternative. Either you have access to three billion videos or you don’t. I don’t see any competitors in our current model. But obviously there would be a competitive risk, when we move into a more connected world, when more and more content becomes available.”

I can't even imagine what ghost CruNcher thinks he saw, and he is running too scared to return to this thread he started to explain his original incoherent comments.

It looks the the Divx CEO is boasting about the success of his company. But, there is a lot of competition.

Revgen

12th August 2009, 07:51

"Either you have access to three billion videos or you don’t."

I guess he forgot about the millions and millions of youtube videos encoded to h.264 using a particular open-source encoder.

mr soft

12th August 2009, 10:42

I think Divx's reign was in the days of slow internet connection and expensive hard drive space. What happened to divx 7 ? There's been very little talk . Are we now going to see standalone players with a Divx 7 certified ? Divx should have bought On2, or focused on some super transcoding program.

On the CD side of things,
My video camera records on SDHC , my TDT records straight to USB pendrive , and I just bought a CD less car radio. It only has USB, AUX. card reader. I just got sick off my toys becoming useless when the CD drive gives up. SSD's still have to come down more in price to be used as a mainstream storage, but when they do it'll be the death of the spinning platter for sure.

Just my 2c

iffybob

12th August 2009, 20:33

What what I've been hearing, you will not be able to own or buy any produced medea, rental or "pay per view" is the new great and profitable way forward, at the moment, its just video, but in future, with high speed radio networks ( part of the reason for switching to digital TV , in England anyway), is to free up bandwidth for these services, all content.

I heard a staitment, ( dont know if it true, but... ) that the latest gen of discs now only BlueRay, ( HD-DVD RIP ), is the last.

Even at the moment I use a 3G modem for my internet connection, when your car is fitted with the same you can stream content from your home to your car, your complete music/video home content, available where ever you go, and the only memory device you will need is to buffer the content.

Compression is all important in this, it reduces the data bandwidth required for transmition, thus cost.

where in the old days (now) if Iwant to listern to music, or watch a DVD, I pull out the disc and place it in the drive/player, and away I go, in the future pick what you want from an internet list and got a medea bill at the end of the mounth.

I also object to the staitment that internet medea is free,... its not, there is a personal outlay for such service, you have to buy the computer, variouse addons including software, and pay for access to the internet, and then there is the hardware upgrades every 2 to 3 years. It poses the question to me, how many CDs and DVDs or books could you buy for the cost of your setup, and since I buy them second hand (cos i is poor) I pay £2 to £5 (pounds english), even at an average outlay of £100 per year for equipment, thats 20 to 50 discs.

The futures bright ..... (and proftit driven) :D

:cool:boB.:cool:

Ghitulescu

12th August 2009, 21:43

RunningSkittle

12th August 2009, 21:53

...I still fail to see the advantages of xvid/divx over the original DVD, other tha[n] space...

portability/compatibility.
xvid/divx and AVC can be streamed to most DNLA clients, plus i can keep many movies on a HDD and bring it with me!

iffybob

12th August 2009, 22:29

As a point of clarity ... ok.

When I said "Own or Buy" .. I ment that you could use the product you have at no further cost for the using (watching or listerning) the media.

Yes the "interlectual" or "artistic" content remains the property of the holder, and you only have a licence to use the product.

I dont know what the legal aspect is now, but when this was debated in England in the 1980s, you were allowed to make a backup copy of any media and use that, on the grounds that only one "copy" was in use at a time, the phrase was that "it could be used 'as a book'", ( the paper version ), ie I could lend you my book, you could read my book, but I could not do so at the same time.

The allowence in English law of being allowed to make a "backup copy", is ingnored by industry and nobody seams willing to stop them, it infered that "copy protection" is illegal here.

As for the care of media :- I take good care of what I have, as I said I buy second hand,

1. this is an option I will not be afforded in the planed future, and I will have to either do without on cost grounds or use pirated illegal media.

2. Previouse owners may not have been, I think some of them have little hamsters with ice skates to run round on them, and am supprised that some of them still play. error correction rules.

3. Some hardware equipment (I will not mention) is known to damage media discs, esp if the disc is run vertical, common damage the second hand retailers refer to is "a halo" on the disc, many tiny scratches in a circle , and they will not buy them.

Eventualy will we be able to by replacement playback equipment, you can still by a VCR but they are becomming rare.
a DVD player will play CDs, BlueRay will play DVDs and CDs, if BR is the last disc media what happens to all the media you own, after BR-players are no longer allowed, you may have the orignal disc, but unable to play it, you may have "backed-up", to MP3 or Avi, is it to become illegal for you to play that content.
The people who collect money for the content want govenments to "yes, it should be illegal", I say stick it........:D

And if you dont think so ............. try buying a new 8 track player ( you have to be real old to get that :))

iffybob

12th August 2009, 23:50

as a foot note : I just read this (again)

There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. ~ Ed Howdershelt

Soap - I suppose is where we are here, they are oppinions, listern, consider, decide.

Ballot - The only ballot we get is with our cash, but we are only given one option, and that is a foundation of a dictator, with medea
you can only by the product from, the person with the licence ( ultimatly ), they can charge what they wish.

Jury - The media producers have deep pockets, and rightly protect there content, how far they are willing to go to profit from the same content in a differnt format, it is still in the courts - ultimately to be resolved ..............

Ammo - I dont think we "ever" need to go that far over media content, it should be left to protect human life only.

Ghitulescu

13th August 2009, 07:50

portability/compatibility.
xvid/divx and AVC can be streamed to most DNLA clients, plus i can keep many movies on a HDD and bring it with me!

You'd be surprised to find out that not all encoding parameters are supported in all the existent or past standalone players. I had once a portable device that rejected 9 out of 10 divx files for various reasons. My new Pio also has hard times synchronizing VBR audio to the video. And I heard the following from a friend of mine who is a big fan of divx (for space reasons): sometimes he is forced to reencode [some of] his movies for each new player he buys.

On the other hand, playing them on PC needs conflicting codecs ("if you have troubles playing xxx please uninstall yyy", and vice-versa) that are often in alpha/beta stage, unless you configure once your PC and compress them accordingly - but that's not portable :). So you can't have portability, quality and size reduction at the same time.

I do see an advantage, but only if you encode directly from your original (uncompressed) source (holidays videos into divx or the like). But taking a DVD and compressing it to divx is pointless in my opinion. But this is only my opinion and my experiences.

PS: the HDDs are so sensible today (I have an old HDD from 97 that still works like a charm, while 2 new ones, 2008 made, shortly died "of fatigue"). I won't trust them as the only archive (actually I'm using them as temporary data storage).

Ghitulescu

13th August 2009, 08:05

As a point of clarity ... ok.

When I said "Own or Buy" .. I ment that you could use the product you have at no further cost for the using (watching or listerning) the media.

Yes the "interlectual" or "artistic" content remains the property of the holder, and you only have a licence to use the product.

I dont know what the legal aspect is now, but when this was debated in England in the 1980s, you were allowed to make a backup copy of any media and use that, on the grounds that only one "copy" was in use at a time, the phrase was that "it could be used 'as a book'", ( the paper version ), ie I could lend you my book, you could read my book, but I could not do so at the same time.

The allowence in English law of being allowed to make a "backup copy", is ingnored by industry and nobody seams willing to stop them, it infered that "copy protection" is illegal here.

You are allowed to make a copy for private use, which is a right in many countries not a "indulgence" as the media industry wants us to believe.

However, while you're allowed to copy you are not allowed to circumvent the protection, and since all new media is protected somehow (it doesn't need to be effective, it simply needs be there) you cannot legally enforce your right.

It's like your wife receiving a free trip to Athos monasteries (the right to copy), but she'll never be allowed to use that ticket because women and female animals are not allowed to enter (copy protection).

I think there are systems of pay-per-view wherein you're allowed to download the encrypted content after you paid, but for watching it you need to have your player connected to the net so that the remote server can allow it to play - "they" can refuse it anytime. Or like the new CI+ system for SAT reception. You can't say in the near future I paid it once now I see it how many times I like it, if they won't allow me this then I'll make a DRM-free copy of my own. No sir, no loger possible!

And you're wrong, copy protections are legal because they enforced by EU directives, which should be translated into national law, or else ;)
I don't say there are right but they are legal - a big difference.

iffybob

13th August 2009, 23:06

I just think that the being allowed "to make and use a backup copy" and "copy protection" are contraditions, but law is not my strong point.

I have had a few decusions with people about a "perminate" backup solutions, the most recently about flash media (SD, Flash Pens), read the specs for your flash drive they are usualy available from the web site of the manufacturer,I only use these as "tempory" stroage, they do leak, yeh there ok for a few years, and I have suggested to people that they copy the data off the drive , once a year, format the drive, and re-write the data, but also to keep another meduim type backup of the data.
I think magnetic storage is supposed to last up to 20 years, ( half that to be safe), but that does not cover the controler board, or any defects that are not apperent at manufacturing test stage.
I dont know how long a CD or DVD writeables, are said to last, havent looked.

I've had simialar compatability issues with AVI/DivX, some of the stuff is staited to be DivX 5.x compatable, ( dont know what the Xvid equivelent vertion is), but mine dont seam to like convertions from the new(ish) HD-TV .

I keep the original media I have, I dont convert DVDs to anything, I just play the discs, CD I do for my Mp3 player, But I keep the CDs, It took me a long time to make up my collection, not giving it up (esp the stuff from the early 80's :D), or copy them to CD-Rs and sell the orginals.

I prefer to keep my cd pressed from a master. :)

LoRd_MuldeR

13th August 2009, 23:28

I just think that the being allowed "to make and use a backup copy" and "copy protection" are contraditions, but law is not my strong point.

If the laws were made for the people and not for certain companies, then whoever sells you a media would be obligated to make sure that you, the user who has legally obtained the media (may that be a physical media or a download), can make a fully working backup of that media. Furthermore the vendor would be obliged to make sure that the media (and the backup) will be fully working without limitation in time - even years after the company who originally sold the media is bankrupt and has shut down their DRM severs it must be fully playable. And that must be guaranteed at the time the media is sold. Consequently any kind of "Copy Protection" that prevents the user from exercising these rights easily would be illegal. Unfortunately reality isn't like that...

von_Runkel

14th August 2009, 00:04

Some masterings are so loud that will sound distorted also on profi players that have 6 or 12 dB headroom (Nelly Furtado-Loose).

Where can I buy a player with 6 or 12 dB headroom? I thought that 0 dB was the absolute maximum in the digital domain.

Ghitulescu

14th August 2009, 07:39

Where can I buy a player with 6 or 12 dB headroom? I thought that 0 dB was the absolute maximum in the digital domain.

There is no such thing as 0dB (it's like saying: he drove agressivelly the racing car for 0cm), but there is 0dBFS (full scale). The dB is a comparation unit, so you have to compare 2 values; by adding FS you say there is a maximum and it's known and the rest of the values are negative. Yes, 0dBFS is the maximum in the digital domain, by definition.

Coming back to the headroom (which is an analog parameter): this is the "space" intentionally left to avoid distorting of the peaks. You can have a digital signal of 0dBFS, but the D/A converter has to approximate/interpolate the values (it's difficult to explain this in words, without an image). The transistors have a flat zone wherein they behave linearly, so the job of a designer is to fit the digital domain into this zone. The same goes BTW with tubes, too.

There are 2 possibilities to do this:
1. use a higher resolution D/A (18bit, 20bit) and shift the numerical range 1 bit lower - you'll have an analogue headroom of 6dB (as each extra bit gives you 6dB) and you still can claim a S/N ratio of 102dB :)
2. fit the digital output to cover less than 100% of the linear zone

Method 1 seems to be more used today, when good quality D/As of more than 16b are cheap and easy to obtain; method 2 was used in the past (that was actually the reason why the CD was supposed to be recorded at -18dBFS: the lack of good 16b D/As and they said that 14b of resolution was anyway the maximum an LP could give ;)).

Now, there is no easy way to find this if the manufacturer does not provide this info in the products' sheet. Most old CD players does not have this extra headroom since the standard had itself these provisions. The new ones go in 3 directions: hi end, middle (affordable HiFi) and China-like. Since the last ones are not intended for audiophiles and they do not sound good anyway, I predict they don't have this extra hr. On the other hand, the cream of the cream probably also respect the standard as they assume that you, the audiophile customer, stay away from these "non standard" CDs and use MSFL or XRCD media. Middle range players, like the 24bit Denons could have method 1 implemented.

I think the new studio range of CD players has the extra hr, but it's just a guess as I cannot test every gear.

I personally use a racked Tascam or a consumer grade Pio through coax to my profi DAT which acts like a good D/As.

von_Runkel

14th August 2009, 08:14

There is no such thing as 0dB (it's like saying: he drove agressivelly the racing car for 0cm), but there is 0dBFS (full scale). The dB is a comparation unit, so you have to compare 2 values; by adding FS you say there is a maximum and it's known and the rest of the values are negative. Yes, 0dBFS is the maximum in the digital domain, by definition.

Yes, decibel is by nature a comparasation unit, but in this audio case it is called reference, AFAIK. In digital audio nothing can ever exceed 0 dB. If it could, it wouldn't be a reference, would it?

It is a completely different story how you couple this reference to an analogue output. What you are talking about is making headroom in analogue circuits, but this is well-known science since the '50s and nothing new to us here.

If you really are in to this, I would suggest to follow smok3's advice and spend some time at hydrogenaudio.org

Ghitulescu

14th August 2009, 08:29

Yes, decibel is by nature a comparasation unit, but in this audio case it is called reference, AFAIK. In digital audio nothing can ever exceed 0 dB. If it could, it wouldn't be a reference, would it?

It is a completely different story how you couple this reference to an analogue output. What you are talking about is making headroom in analogue circuits, but this is well-known science since the '50s and nothing new to us here.

If you really are in to this, I would suggest to follow smok3's advice and spend some time at hydrogenaudio.org

The correct name for a dB as you use it is dBfs so it contains a reference. A dB value can be positive or negative.

Like in analog, the headroom still exists in the digital world, but since nothing could overpass the 0dBFS, you don't have the positive headroom (like +3 or +6 or even +12dB) of the analog. In digital world you have however a marker on most pro VUmeters at either -18dB or -12dB, it's your duty and responsability to prevent the signal going on and/or over 0dBfs.

The way the headroom was created in analog can be applied to digital too, in pure theory, you simply say that the level of what today is known as -18dBfs is from tomorrow 0dBfs, bingo you have now a +18dB digital headroom (see, a positive value).

I'm not into audio more than I'm into video, but I were to follow your advice your question would have had no answer, would it?:p

von_Runkel

14th August 2009, 09:05

The way the headroom was created in analog can be applied to digital too, in pure theory, you simply say that the level of what today is known as -18dBfs is from tomorrow 0dBfs, bingo you have now a +18dB digital headroom (see, a positive value).

How can this playing with numbers possibly increase anything but confusion? I am sure it doesn't increase the dynamic range, which we use the dB scale for in the first place.

Ghitulescu

14th August 2009, 09:28

How can this playing with numbers possibly increase anything but confusion? I am sure it doesn't increase the dynamic range, which we use the dB scale for in the first place.

What I previously said it was player with analog headroom (the word analog was missing since only analog could have headroom, it was implicit). Because one need a bit of analog headroom to accomodate the wave approximation of a digital signal getting close to the 0dBfs.

Then I said in theory one can create digital headroom by lowering the reference. I was not playing with numbers. That was done with the analog, once the technology evolved and larger flat ranges were available. And it seems that this was also use in marketing, as I've seen a lot of gear proudly prezenting say Volume +3 or +10 :)